Fidel & Malcolm X: Memories of a Meeting

More than five decades have lapsed since September 1960, when African American Muslim leader Malcolm X welcomed Cuban President Fidel Castro to a midnight meeting at Harlem s Black-owned Hotel Theresa. Castro and his delegation had come to New York to attend the UN General Assembly, but the management of the Manhattan hotel they had booked refused to house them. Upon learning of their plight, Malcolm invited the Cuban emissaries to come uptown to Harlem, where he claimed they would be greeted with open arms. Indeed, Harlemites by the thousands gave Castro a rousing, even magnificent welcome, keeping a round-the-clock vigil in the pouring rain outside his balcony window. To Harlem s masses, unfazed by the red baiting and anti-Cuba hysteria of the day, Castro was that bearded revolutionary who had told White America to go to hell. They crowded the streets to see and cheer the Cuban delegation and its then thirty-four-year-old revolutionary leader. Sadly, however, little is said, even tod